


Gladiolus

by TheRealNightTempest



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Abused Stiles Stilinski, Alpha Laura Hale, Alternate Universe, Angst, Beta Derek Hale, Depression, Derek Feels Guilty, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Character Death(s), Pack Politics, Stiles Comes Back, Teen Wolf, Triggers, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 20:32:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2442122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRealNightTempest/pseuds/TheRealNightTempest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles moved to New York City to attend Columbia and somehow he ended up abandoned by his pack.  To fill the void where his loved one used to be, he seeks affection from the wrong source.  Years later a terrible encounter forces Stiles to move back home to Beacon Hills.  He'll have to face people he used to call family.  Laura.  The Pack.  Worst of all Derek.</p><p>And because of them he'll have to learn to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gladiolus

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> I just wanted to be clear that this story deals with physical abuse, wearing scars, and how Stiles deals with the aftermath. If any of that might trigger something bad for you, then you might want to skip this one. Most mentions are kept as light and respectful as possible because abuse and depression are delicate matters and personal to each individual.
> 
> Might need a tissue for this one.
> 
> Thanks for reading. ;)

In the beginning New York City was supposed to be Stiles’ dream come true. A college experience studying under one of the greatest retired pack advisors to ever walk the planet was everything Stiles had ever hoped for.  And it was just an added bonus that Professor Millwick was also the head of the Library Science Department at Columbia, where Stiles was days away from receiving his Masters.

What wasn’t great was Stiles endeavoring to drown his sorrows in the warm body of an alpha not belonging to his pack, after being publically rejected when he was eighteen by Derek Hale, after being pushed away by those he loved.  Because as much as Stiles knew, or thought he knew about alphas, Donovan Dougherty was nothing like Stiles’ alpha, Laura Hale. And he was absolutely _nothing_ like Derek Hale.  No, Don was much, much worse.  Stiles had scars to prove it.

He tended to Stiles’ busted lip, his battered face streaked with tears and his wide brown eyes pleading for sanctuary before Millwick crouched in front of his protégé and gathered him up against his chest.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened.  But this time would be the last.  Millwick refused to watch Stiles suffer any longer.

“It’s time to go back to California, Stiles,” Millwick whispered into Stiles’ hair.  “This isn’t what they wanted for you.  This isn’t what you deserve.”

Stiles held on for dear life.  He gasped and sobbed into his professor’s neck.  It was true, he didn’t deserve this.  This isn’t what his pack had wanted for him, right?  They’d kind of abandoned him, but they didn’t hate him that way—couldn’t hate him that much.  But Stiles had thought this was love, and blinded by the gorgeous, street smart alpha that took interest in a nerdy West Coast teen like Stiles, he let himself forget about those days when Don got a little too rough, took out his misplaced anger on the one he was supposed to care about.

“I’ll call Laura.”

“No!” Stiles tugged on Millwick’s hand.  “You can’t do that.”

“I have to, Stiles.”  Millwick carefully traced the bruise along Stiles’ jaw.  “This isn’t the place for you.  Your stay here was never supposed to be permanent.  It’s time for you to go home and do what you were meant to do.”

“You can’t tell her.”

“If I don’t, you have to eventually.  This is a direct challenge to your alpha, not to mention careless to your life and your wellbeing.  Laura is a good leader.  Don’t think for a second this will go unnoticed, Stiles.”  Millwick frowned, thumbing just under Stiles’ bottom lip like a worried father.  “I’ll take care of everything.  You focus on yourself for a change, hmm?”

“I love it here.”

“I know you enjoy learning here.  I know you do, Stiles, and I have loved having you.  You have been a joy to teach and I don’t say that often.”  Millwick smiled softly.  “But circumstances have changed and I’d be a terrible mentor if I made you stay just because I’d miss you and that brain of yours.  There’s an entire town that needs you back home.  I’d never forgive myself from keeping you from what’s rightfully yours, your title, your place, and your life.”

Stiles looked at the ground.  He closed his eyes.  Millwick was right as usual.  He always was. But Stiles just didn’t know if he could face his old alpha without sparking his years old humiliation.  If he could be what they needed when they didn’t really want him there to begin with.  If he could deal with breathing in general after what had happened hours before.  If he could sleep without seeing Donovan shifting into his full wolf form and ripping his claws down Stiles’ chest.

Now he had no choice but to face Laura again, he thought as he looked at the cuts in his hands from his palms sliding against rough concrete.  Blood soaked the front of his ripped to shreds shirt.  He supposed it was better to die a little death from embarrassment than to die for real at the hands of a born and bred alpha.

He left for Beacon Hills on a Tuesday exactly two weeks later.  He got a new phone, programmed only the numbers he would need and left New York City behind.  Donovan had no idea.  Stiles hoped it stayed that way.

***

**Two Months Later**

He’d seen everyone that mattered since moving back into his father’s old house, what was now his house alone.  He visited his dad and Melissa, his father half retired from his sheriff’s position because Danny would be taking up the seat in February.  Most of the deputies were happy with Danny, even if he seemed too young.  But that was Danny, and another set of eyes to watch his dad’s eating habits wasn’t a bad thing at all.

Melissa was still working at the hospital, but she was down to part time.  The other half of her week was split between redecorating Scott’s childhood home into something that was her and John’s together, and as an abuela to a two year old.  Between Melissa and John, that kid was spoiled rotten.

Scott was slowly but surely taking over Deaton’s practice with only a few months left to go until he had his final degree.  He’d be a real veterinarian.  His lifelong dream.  Scott and Allison, the former Argent now a nurse herself alongside Melissa, had also been married since junior year of college.  They had a daughter now.  Her name was Marie.  She was two and the most beautiful little girl Stiles had ever seen.

Jackson and Lydia ran the Beacon Hills office of the Whittemores’ law practice.  They still weren’t married, but Lydia had a rock on her finger that suggested it was going to happen sooner rather than later.  And while they still bitched and fussed at each other like they hated one another, Stiles knew better.  Those two hadn’t changed; still at the top of their game and in love like only two people of a kind could be.

Boyd and Erica were together.  They’d finally regrouped after breaking up several times and worked their asses off to put a down payment on a crappy two bedroom at the edge of town, close to the Hale house because they were tight knit with Laura.  Erica was a waitress and sometimes bartender at Laura and Derek’s dive _Gladiolus_ , and Boyd was the new varsity lacrosse coach and gym teacher at Beacon Hills High.

Isaac and Danny finally got together three years ago and were now the proud owners of a coffee shop called _The Hatter’s Table_ , dubbed _Hatter’s_ by most of the town.  It was more Isaac’s journey into small business ownership than Danny’s, but every cop in town could be seen in and out of their joint during the day, showing support for their prospective sheriff to be and his shy, bright eyed fiancée. _Hatters_ was also right next door to _Gladiolus_.  Stiles hadn’t been to either of them since arriving in Beacon Hills.

That would leave him open to seeing Derek again.  He couldn’t chance it.

So Stiles stuck to his routine.  He worked the archives at Beacon Hills Library through Millwick’s glowing recommendation, mainly in the basement section where that brand of books needed constant care and protective wards.  A collection amassed by Donna, the quiet head librarian who was also a retired pack advisor, that had chosen Beacon Hills to get some peace with her husband. 

Stiles liked her a lot.  She didn’t ask him unnecessary questions like if he was married, what he did outside of work, or if he had children.

He sometimes stayed late to help with author readings or to put away carts of books because going home to an empty house hurt his soul.  Maybe Donna already knew that.  Knowing this town, she probably did.  Hence she didn’t need to ask him anything because she was well aware.

But Stiles did have to face Laura and play a dangerous game of question evasion.  Laura had made her presence abundantly clear since Stiles arrived.  And although Millwick had kept his promise not to tell Laura about Donovan, the abusive boyfriend Stiles had chosen to stay with for two years until it became life or death, it was hard not to notice the changes in Stiles.

Where he’d once been full of life, yammering to anyone that would listen, he was now quiet and withdrawn.  Where he’d once smiled and laughed, he didn’t anymore.

He was a different person, not because of time spent away that developed college students into mature adults.  He was different because he was a victim and he didn’t want anyone to know.

His aloofness led to Laura knocking on the door to the basement archives room one night after closing.  Stiles jumped and flailed up from the table after hours of complete silence.  He caught his breathe, putting a hand to his stomach as he watched Laura slink into the room with her arms crossed over her chest.

She put her hands on the table.  “You missed our meeting.”

Stiles surveyed his latest research project scattered over the table like Laura was.  It had been his Master’s thesis in the beginning; a collective history on the Nemeton.  He’d obsessed over the stupid stump for years until he finally got it in his head to write a book.  Only natural, he mused, to be curious about the source of power that made Beacon Hills an actual beacon for the supernatural.  The time must have got away with him.  Or quite possibly his subconscious didn’t want to keep an appointment with Laura, because Stiles’ conscious effort surely didn’t.

“Stiles.”

Stiles met her eyes and had to look away.  He wasn’t strong enough to hold her gaze anymore.  Donovan had beaten every last ounce of human defiance out of him.

It wasn’t long before Laura came to stand less than a foot from him.  She cradled his cheek in her warm, slender hand and tilted his face up to the light. She wouldn’t have missed the way his body was shaking, the stutter of his breath, his fear that stunk up the room to her alpha senses. “I don’t know what happened when you were gone, but I missed you.  Do you get that?  We all missed you very much.”

Stiles swallowed as he tried to look away.  Laura shook her head and brought her other hand to his face so he couldn’t.  “You’re family, Stiles, and you need to trust me with whatever it is you have to tell me.  Because it may not be tonight, but it’s going to be soon that you start talking.  This isn’t you.  It’s like you’re broken.”

“Maybe I finally grew up."

Lies.  She knew it.  She’d always know.  “You did grow up.  However, I know this isn’t who you were supposed to be.”

That made him angry for some reason, like she could just pressure him into being as happy go lucky as he’d been back then, the Stiles everyone always took for granted, the one they practically threw over the town line and said get out of here.  New York wants you more.  “And who was I supposed to be, Laura?”

Stiles yanks out her hold.  She lets him.  She could’ve easily stopped him.  “Was I supposed to be the aging bachelor that reads comic books and stuffs junk food into his mouth at inopportune times?  The funny guy that’d always be there with a one liner to defuse tension?  The one with the plan that no one listened to but turned out to be the right answer all along? Huh!  Is that who I was supposed to be?”

Thank fuck they’re in the basement, where the walls are thick and no one is upstairs to even catch a whisper of him yelling through the floors, even though it’d probably only be the janitor but still.  He puts his hands up to ward her off, but she’s Laura and she cares, maybe a little too much about the guy she’d always called her weird little brother.  She stalks him over to the wall.  He can barely breathe, staring into her eyes now ringed with red.

It’s too much.  Her eyes.  They remind him of…

Stiles slides down the wall, curling into a ball as he shields his head with his arms.

“Stiles…”

“Please don’t hurt me.”

“Oh my god, Stiles…”  Laura is there with gentle hands, caressing his forearms that are littered with thin shiny scars as his sweater sleeves ride down to his elbows.  “What happened to you?  Who did this?”

Stiles goes to another place.  The one he goes when Donovan loses control and doesn’t stop.  The place that holds refuge the next morning when Donovan is curled around his back and Stiles is left to stare at the wall, never having slept for a single second.    Where Donovan wakes to the stench of Stiles’ fear and he just cuddles closer, rumbles sleepily.

He was sorry. He loved Stiles.  He’ll get better.  Let’s have sex before I take you to breakfast.  I didn’t try to bash your skull in with my fist last night.

Stiles doesn’t remember how he got home that night after his breakdown in front of Laura, but he wakes up in bed, alone and scared. 

His pillows smell vaguely of Laura.

***

It’s Saturday.  Stiles doesn’t have much in the way of plans.  He never does anymore.  He’d thought about cleaning out the old shed in the backyard, the place he used to grow exotic plants during his training days with Deaton.  But he doesn’t feel like moving from his spot.

He managed to get a pot of coffee on earlier and there’s a show about home repair drowning out the silence of his empty house.  So he decides to just stay put on the couch, slowly becoming a part of the sagging leather cushions in his worn out pajama bottoms and an old Beacon Hills PD sweatshirt he’d stolen from his dad before he left home.

It’s a fine spot indeed.  Stiles is about to flip the channel.

The knock at the door is polite and professional, three little bangs that could signal anything from the arrival of UPS to another deputy’s wife with a casserole.  Stiles doesn’t care.  They’ll go away eventually, whoever it is.

The knock intensifies, which is never good.  It doesn’t stop and Stiles is starting to freak out a bit because it sounds like someone trying to break down the door.  He gets up from the couch and goes to peek out the window.  Lydia’s BMW is parked in the drive, Jackson seated in the passenger seat looking… anxious?

Stiles opens the door to Lydia’s raised hand and he leans away from her fist.  She looks from her hand to Stiles and drops it immediately like it offended her.  Stiles thinks she knows.  Laura had to have told her. But Lydia doesn’t immediately jump him like she used to when something was wrong, so maybe she was just caught off guard mid knock.

“Where have you been?  I’ve called you _several_ times this morning.”  She lifts a brow, waiting, but Stiles doesn’t have an answer.  “I carved out time from my busy schedule to see you and you can’t even pick up your phone?  And what are you wearing?  It’s noon, Stiles.”

“So glad you could set aside time to make fun of my fashion choices, Lydia.  Now if you’ll excuse me…” He makes to shut the door.

She wedges her heel in the doorjamb and pushes back.  “No, I will not _excuse_ _you_.”  She forces her way inside and marches around the living room, picking up dirty laundry with a single finger and throwing him a disgusted look over her shoulder.  She toes an empty pizza box, runs her finger over the dust accumulated on the coffee table and picks up a half empty pack of cigarettes on top of the television. 

“ _Really_?”

“Everyone smokes in the city.” He shrugs.

“Stiles Stilinkski does not smoke just because everyone else does.  The Stiles I know has always been highly against smoking because it’s an unnecessary risk to everyone’s health.”  She crushes the pack between her fingers and narrows her eyes.  “What is this?  What are you doing?”

“Why do you care?”

She looks taken aback.  Her gaze softens and her bottom lip juts out just a touch.  “What do you mean why do I care?”

“Exactly how I asked, Lydia.”  Not Lyds, not the most beautiful girl in the world, not my future wife in jest, just Lydia and that apparently is not what she was hoping for.  “I was gone for almost seven years and you called me on holidays, you sent me stupid cards once in a while when you were probably feeling bad that you hadn’t remembered my birthday, you Skyped…maybe once?  You never came to visit me.  So yeah, why do you care?”

“You’re my friend,” she said in a moment of vulnerability.  The great Lydia Martin at a loss of how to control the situation.

“Am I?  I seem to remember losing most of my friends when they ran me out of the pack and out of town.”  Stiles just stares at her, feeling cold to the core.

“You wouldn’t have left if we’d made it easy to stay, Stiles.  You were always meant to go to Columbia, study with Millwick and then come home.  We never kicked you out of the pack.  In fact, it was the hardest thing in the world to let you go, knowing we had to wait years to get you back.”  She sighs her way to sitting on the one chair not covered in blankets or wrappers or dirty laundry.  “And then you come home like this.”  She gestures at him.  “Didn’t even tell us you were back.  Didn’t know until Laura told us two weeks later. What is that?  Who are you?”

“Not the same person anymore.”

She looks up with tear filled eyes.  “But why?”

“Because I was happiest here and no one gave me a choice.  I had to make concessions for the loss.”

Stiles doesn’t offer her anything else.  Lydia looks ready to dissect him and put him back together until she’s satisfied, but she pushes onto her toes before she leaves and kisses his cheek.

“We’ll make this right.”

She leaves.  Stiles doesn’t know what she meant and he can’t find it in himself to care anymore what the great

Lydia Martin has planned.  She’ll just do what she wants anyway.

***

Scott shows up when it gets dark.  He’s exactly the same as when Stiles left home, goofy grin and big brown eyes that seem younger than his years.  He’s wearing scrubs and holding a six pack like he’s not sure it’s a good idea but he’s rolling with it anyway.

“Had an emergency delivery at the clinic.  Golden Retriever puppies, four of them.  Was on my way home and decided to stop by.”

“With a six pack?  That’s seems premeditated.”  Stiles grabs the beer and leads Scott into his half cleaned den.  He’d made a little headway after Lydia left.  A little cleaning couldn’t hurt.

Scott shrugs.  “You caught me.  Do I really need an excuse to see you?”

“Shouldn’t you be home with the family?  It’s Saturday night and all.”

“Allison’s working a double. Marie is getting spoiled at Mom and John’s for the night.  I keep hoping she’ll come back without the terrible twos.”  He smiles and plops down on the couch.  “I love that kid to the moon and back but seriously, Stiles, she’s like a demon on a good day right now.”

Scott had never left Stiles.  He’d been the first person Scott had called after he proposed to Allison. He wanted to ask his best friend to now be his best man.  He’d come up for a week when Stiles turned twenty-one and they’d bar crawled their way through the city like idiots.  They’d texted every day, Skyped three times a week, called each other incessantly until Allison started getting jealous—not really, but she did put a cap on their weekly minutes with each other.

But still, Scott had been the only one.

In the years Stiles had been gone, he’d come back to Beacon Hills exactly three times.  Once when his Dad had begged him home for Christmas.  Two days and he never told anyone he was there besides Scott, Allison, Melissa and John.  Laura had to have known, but she didn’t say anything because she’d have felt Stiles’ anger from the moment he’d dropped in.  It had been his sophomore year and he was still pissed for being forced out of town.

The second time had been for Scott’s wedding.  Stiles had spent twenty-four hours in town, never once looking Derek Hale in the eye, or speaking to him at all, and then he’d flown back to New York City and sobbed for an entire day.

The last time had been a week after Marie was born.  He owed Scott that.  He owed Allison for including him in something so precious, for remembering him as they continued their family.  Stiles had fallen in love with Marie the minute he’d laid eyes on her, but he knew he couldn’t get attached.  Because he’d just fly back to New York and who knew the next time he’d see her.

As it turned out, Stiles actually got to watch Marie grow—pictures, videos, Skype sessions with the entire McCall family.  No, Scott never kicked Stiles out of his life.  He’d included him in every aspect.

So Stiles needed to return the favor.  Now was just not the time.  He wasn’t ready.

Scott shifts uncomfortably next to him.  “Can I ask you one thing, and if you don’t want to answer that’s cool, I’ll drop it, but I’m gonna ask anyway.”

Stiles braces himself for another round of Laura.  His nails bite into his knees through his flannel pajama bottoms.  But Scott just fingers the neck of his beer with a sad little look on his face.

“Why didn’t you call me to tell me you were coming home?”

“It was last minute,” he lies.  They both know it because werewolves.

“Stiles…”

“Because I was ashamed,” Stiles’ voice cracks.

“Why?”  Scott takes his hand, setting down his beer on the coffee table.  “You can tell me anything, Stiles.  You know you can.”

Stiles shakes his head.  “Not everything.”

Scott being Scott just nodded, although he looked as unhappy as Stiles had ever seen him.  He put his arm around Stiles and scooted into his side.  It was a werewolf thing, a method of tactile comfort, but it was also a best friend thing.

Scott held him for hours until Stiles fell asleep, face covered in tears he hadn’t known he was crying.

It was the first time in years Stiles was reminded of what it felt like to be pack.

***

His job at the library kept him busy.  His Nemeton project was getting bigger and bigger because Stiles had always known it was a never ending circle of information, and maybe that was what he wanted, to keep digging for something to do with the knowledge that there wasn’t a real answer to conclude his findings, aka a rabbit hole that kept his mind off of things.

Various pack members trickled in and out of his house during the week.  Laura called most days.  She wanted him to come see the bar, to stop in next door as well, so Isaac could show off something he was proud of.  They acted like they missed him.  Stiles didn’t know what there was to miss.

He didn’t love himself anymore; therefore he wasn’t sure he could love them back the way they claimed to care for him.

It was just after five on a Friday evening.  Stiles had finally gotten around to cleaning out the shed.  He’d relined the walls with thick plastic tarps and got the heat lamps working again.  He’d cleared the old pots of dead plants that crunched under his fingers and filled the containers with soil and seeds.  Even marked each pot by species and watered them.

The last thing he did was cover the claw marks inside the shed door.  The ones that Derek had left two days before Stiles flew to New York City for the first time.  Derek had been so angry, seemed so scared to admit he felt the same way as Stiles.  But Stiles knew that had been a mental fabrication on his part because Derek hadn’t loved him.  Derek Hale hated him so much he sent Stiles out into the world alone and never talked to him again.

Stiles had three scarred claw marks across his torso six years later.

He couldn’t look at the shed door every day now and see the evidence of Derek’s hatred for him.

Stiles absently rubbed his stomach.  He already had enough physical reminders of why he wasn’t good enough.

When he went back into the house he was unsurprised to find Boyd and Erica making dinner in his kitchen.  The people from his past kept worming their way into his life every passing day.

Erica tried to hug him but Stiles held up his dirty hands.  “Let me wash off the Wolfsbane.”

Erica smiled in her dark, sultry way, lips coated in glossy red that reminded him of all the sexy grins she’d tossed his way back in high school. Not that they’d meant anything beyond sisterly love after she’d taken the bite, but Stiles couldn’t help but look away before he was dragged back to a place he didn’t belong anymore.  She may have smiled the same way, but she wasn’t the same person.  None of them were.

“I can make my own dinner,” he says, washing his hands next to Boyd.

Boyd rubs shoulders with him, trying to mask his scent marking with a casual shift into Stiles’ space.  “Shut up and set the table.”

“Hello to you too.”

“It would be the first time you said an actual hello since you got back.”  Erica rolls her eyes at him as Stiles gathers the plates.

“Can we not do this right now?”

“Do what?”  Boyd messes with the steamer basket in the pot, making sure the veggies aren’t mushy yet.

“Act like Laura didn’t send you here to make me talk because you’re the most approachable member of her pack.  Why she sent Erica with you is anyone’s guess, because that sort of negates her intentions, but hey, every alpha has to fuck up sometime, right?”

“Stiles…”  Erica freezes in place, her hands still around the salad bowl.

“I’m getting really sick of people saying my name that way, like I’m dying.”

“Maybe it’s because you walk around like you _are_ dead.”  Boyd pulls some chicken something or other out of the oven.  “And knock it off with Laura.  She cares about your ass.  We all do.”

“Seriously, Stiles, what is your problem?  Talk to us.”  Erica sinks into a chair, defeat written all over face, desperation kicking in until she’s almost whining under her breath.  Stiles has only ever seen that look on Erica’s face back in high school, before Laura had made her a wolf, before she could cope with living at all.

He didn’t hold onto the image of that Erica.  That Erica didn’t exist anymore.  Present Erica had a life, a job, a pack, and a mate.  She’d grown up without Stiles in the picture, and they’d done that, taken that away from him.

“My problem is all of you.  Can’t just leave me alone?!”  Stiles drank his ire down like rough whisky.  He swallowed it and let it churn.  “You know nothing about who I am now and that’s not my problem.  You let this happen.  And then you come here with your chicken and your fucking salad and expect me to tell you everything like I should trust you.  Well guess what?  I don’t know if I ever will again.”

Erica got up and walked out.  He heard her muffled cries as she slammed the door.  Boyd stared at him for a good long while before he closed his eyes and shook his head.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” he says as everyone else already has, “and I want to beat the fuck out of whoever made you like this, but don’t you ever tell me you don’t trust me.  I would put Erica’s life in your hands if it came to it and I know you’d do the same.”  Boyd dried his hands off on a towel and threw it into the sink.  “When you’re ready to apologize you know where to find us.”

Boyd left without looking back.

Stiles tucked his knees up under his chin and died another tiny death.

***

The next day Millwick called.

“I thought I would give you a head’s up that Laura is going to corner you tonight.  Running would not be in your best interest.”  Millwick sighs.  Stiles can see it in his mind, his old professor taking off his wire rimmed glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose.  “I’ve held her off long enough, Stiles.  It’s been months.  You have to tell her and stop this or I will.”

“I can’t stop being depressed.”  Stiles almost puts the phone down when he realizes what he’d said.

“Let them help you heal, Stiles.  They are your pack.”

“Not anymore.  It’s different now.”

“Yes, it is.  He hurt you.  He messed you up so completely that you’re scared of getting close to people again.  I know that, but they don’t.”

“I can’t tell her.  She’ll kill him.”

“Like he already killed a part of you?  What is his life worth compared to yours, Stiles?  Can you really defend him now, after all that he did?  Will you allow everything you’ve worked for, all those people who care about you to disappear because he still has hold over you?”

“I can’t…”  Stiles tucks his body into the corner of his couch and brings the blanket up higher around his neck.

“You can.  I know you can, Stiles.  Talk to her.”

Stiles closes his eyes.  He’s not sure how much longer he can do this, keep this secret, let it eat him alive and push everything away.  “She won’t understand.”

“It’s Laura, Stiles.  If anyone knows anything about depression, about losing something that makes you whole, it’s Laura Hale who lost everyone she loved except for her brother.  Talk to her.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do that.  Call me anytime.  I mean it.”

Stiles nods and lets the phone go.  He takes a little nap, hoping Laura will forget.

She doesn’t.

She’s sitting on the edge of the couch when Stiles blinks his way to awareness.  Laura has on her black Gladiolus shirt like she’s just come from the bar.  Her hair is a mess in a bun on her head and her eyes are so sad Stiles can hardly stand to look at her.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it.  I know something horrible happened to you.  I know you don’t think it’s right to smile anymore like you don’t deserve to, because you’ve been tainted and tainted people aren’t allowed to be happy.  But that’s bullshit.”  She toes off her shoes and cuddles into him on the couch, making space for herself behind him.

Stiles nearly keens through his teeth when she wraps an arm around his waist and spoons him.  He’s missed her so much, the sister she used to be for him, the one who made things easier, better for a lost boy trying to find a place to fit in.  He’s scared she’ll reject him again, scared she won’t want him because he’s beyond broken and not who he used to be.

Scared he’ll have to pick up and go somewhere else far lonelier that this spot on the couch.

“You know what else is bullshit?  That you aren’t pack.  You will always be part of my family, whether you’re a wolf or an alien or a fucking wizard.  Stiles, you are as close to blood as you will ever be to me and nothing you tell me will ever change that.”  She kisses his hair and rubs her fingers across his hand.  “I know it was hard to leave and I know it might have felt like we pushed you out, but that wasn’t what happened.  You had a full ride to your choice school.  Millwick wanted you out of hundreds of hopeful freshmen.  It was the opportunity of a lifetime and we knew you’d stay if we let you.  We couldn’t let you, Stiles.  We’re your family and we wanted the best for you.”

Stiles squeezes her hand and doesn’t let go.

“And we knew you’d come back.  You always come back for us.  And I’d be lying if I said we weren’t just as miserable as you were while you were gone, Stiles.  But you stopped calling.  You stopped wanting to come home.  You stopped basically all contact with us and we were floored to say the least.”  She sniffles against his neck and hugs him tighter.  “I wanted to come see you so many times but none of the three alphas there would give me permission.  Our pack had grown and they saw us as a threat.  Letting you stay in the city was the best they could offer us.  And Millwick promised to look after you.”

“He did.”

“I know, honey.”  She nuzzles his neck.  “He’s pretty amazing.”

“He made me come home,” Stiles whimpers.

“Best thing he ever did and I will forever be in his debt.”

Stiles tries to breathe.  He can’t find the words.  He’s scared, so nervous to tell her.

“Tell me, Stiles.  You’ll feel better, I promise.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel better.”

“One word at a time.  I’ll stay as long as it takes and probably after because I’m comfortable and I’m not letting you go.  I can sleep here all week if I have to.”

Stiles flinches as her hand circles his wrist, pushing his sleeves up to reveal the slashes covering his forearms.  “Did you do this to yourself?” she asks calmly, but he hears the roughness in her voice.

Stiles shakes his head.

“Did you like having done to you?  Was it a kink and you were scared I’d find out?”

Stiles shakes his head harder.

“Did someone hurt you, someone you’re covering for because you know I’m going to find them and rip their face off?”

Because he just can’t do this anymore Stiles nods and Laura covers him with her body as he lets out a pained sob.  He burrows into the couch, gasping for air and clinging to Laura, embracing her scent and her comfort as each of his cries brings him closer to home.

“I loved him,” Stiles pants the words.  “Tried…. Tried to replace him.  But no one wants me,” he holds up his wrists for her to see.  “No one.”

Laura stares at him, her hair curtaining around them as she pushes up onto her elbows.  “Oh Stiles…  This isn’t love.”  She pushes up his sweatshirt where it rides up his belly. Her face twists grimly and her eyes water as she traces the claw marks across his pale chest.  “This is a death sentence.”

***

Stiles shuffles into _Gladiolus_ after Donna sent him home early because he ‘looked like he needed it.’

What he needed was to get over himself and thank Laura for being there the other night, for helping him get it out when he hadn’t known he’d needed to that much.  A chance encounter with Derek was a small price to pay for starting over with his alpha.  Because despite how much Derek hated him, Stiles still needed Laura in his life.

Laura and Derek’s place is nice, but not so much so it feels out of his price range and uncomfortable.  He spots a jukebox in the corner, yet some contemporary indie music floats through the air.  A few black and white pictures of various family members dot the walls.  One side of the room is made up of plush leather booths and across the way a row of sturdy stools are lined up next to the polished bar.  And the guy holding the rag, doing said polishing looks up to meet Stiles’ eyes.

Stiles crumbles inside like he told himself he wouldn’t do because Derek stops what he’s doing to stare.  His jaw tightens and he scowls, visibly vibrating with anger.  Stiles steps away, his worst nightmare come to light.  He backs into someone, starts to mutter a hushed, terrified apology until the person whirls him around and he’s looking at Erica.

He had never been so glad to see her in all of his life.

“I have to go,” he tells her, because he does or he’ll throw up.  He glances over his shoulder to where Derek has dropped his rag and is looking like he just got hit over the head with a stick; shocked with his mouth falling open and eyes wide.  Stiles can’t find it in himself to calculate the shift in Derek’s emotions.  He’s too busy trying not to lose his shit in public at the moment.

“Okay.” Erica nods, steering him closer to the exit with a hand on his shoulder.  “Can I come with you?” she asks.

He nods.  She takes his hand.  And that’s how he finds himself inside _Hatter’s_ , nursing a cup of cream with a little bit of coffee.  It’s not busy.  It’s midafternoon and the high school is still in session, and the cops are still full from lunch.  Just a few middle aged woman discussing their favorite book of the month in the corner.

Erica is pressed next to him in the booth, still wearing her _Gladiolus_ shirt, and across from them is a worried looking Isaac.

“Did Laura tell you?”  Stiles looks between them.

“No.”  Isaac shakes his head.  He’s not lying.  Even with all the years apart between them, Isaac will never be able to learn to lie.  It’s a small thing that Stiles hold on to.

“But you should,” Erica follows up.  “You should tell us.”

“I was horrible to you.”

“Doesn’t matter.”  Erica puts her arm around him.  “Boyd isn’t mad either, okay?”

Stiles nods.

“Stiles, I might be the quiet one.  We may not have seen each other in years, but I know what this is.  I’ve lived it.”  Isaac glances up from his cup.  Of course Isaac knows what this is.  He’d been a victim before Laura made him a wolf.  His dad would beat him senseless back in high school and for years before that.  Of course Isaac knew.

“I can’t… Not here.”

“Then when and where?”  Isaac reaches across the table to hold Stiles’ hand.  The book club ladies are looking on with mixed expressions of curiosity and pity.

“We’ll order pizza.  Tonight.  Your house.  You, me, Isaac and Scott.  And don’t say not Scott because he’s in this and you know it.”  Erica nudges him until he looks at her.  “Okay?”

“Okay.”  Stiles seals his fate.  “Fine.”

***

Stiles can’t sit still.  Even depressed and mopey he can’t sit down with them on the couch to save his life.  It’s like all the dormant energy he’d left unused with Donovan when he was the alpha’s submissive punching bag is crawling its way through his body, begging to be let out.

“I don’t know how to start.”

“The beginning,” Scott prompts, offering up a crooked smile.  “We’re just here to listen, Stiles.  No pressure.”

“No pressure,” 

Stiles laughs dryly.  “Yeah.  Okay.”

“You left for school?”  Erica motions with her hand.

“No, I didn’t just leave for school, I felt like I was kicked out of town.”  Stiles gets a grip, finds the hook of his tangent and runs with it.  “You were all like goodbye, get out, go have a better life somewhere else.  Except you, man, you never did that.  I never thanked you.”

“Don’t thank me for that.”  Scott shrugs.  “You’re my best friend, Stiles, my legitimate brother now and I can’t go a week without talking to you.  But it’s not like everyone else shunned you.”

“ _He_ did,” Stiles says like they’ll understand.  “He messed with my head that summer.  Hot and cold until he came over to my house two days before I had to leave.  Two days!  He kissed me.  Did he ever tell you that?  He kissed me like I meant something, knew I loved him, he fucking knew it!  And then he told me he couldn’t stand me, that I was some annoying teenager that might have been good in bed but he wasn’t willing to give it a try.  I was so humiliated.  Everyone was looking.  He dragged me back to my shed and continued to tear me a new one about how I had to leave.  This wasn’t my place anymore. He didn’t want me here.”

Erica put a hand to her mouth.  Isaac gave him a pitiful pout and whimpered.  Scott looked pissed.

They knew exactly who he was talking about now.

“So I had to move all the way to New York City.  No family.  No friends.  Just Scott on the other end of the phone and people who sometimes remembered I wasn’t in Beacon Hills anymore, shooting me mandatory ‘hey, how are ya’s.’  I was so lonely,” Stiles confesses as he looks at the floor.  “So fucking lonely you have no idea.”

“Why didn’t you just come home, Stiles?”  Erica is half out of her seat, torn between sitting and hugging him into her lap.

“Because I thought I wasn’t wanted!  I thought I was being thrown to a new pack, Erica.  There are three of them in the city!”  Stiles wipes his eyes and continues to pace.  “So I went to school, trained with Millwick, went to work and then went home.  Every day.  Every week.  For years.  And when the alphas came around to check in, I had to host them in my apartment, wait on hand and foot, all alone with no one to protect me.  I gave up hoping _my_ pack would back me up and tell them to fuck off, that my pack would visit other than Scott, would stop me from making terrible decisions and never let me be taken advantage of.  And somewhere along the way, I guess I got lonely enough to start hanging with the city packs.  I needed someone, so I found someone.”

“You never told me, Stiles.”  Scott blinks away the anger, now appearing hurt.  He should be.  Stiles should have told him.  They tell each other everything; he cannot say that enough.  “About Derek.  About the alphas.  About any of it.”

“Because it wasn’t your problem anymore.  _I_ wasn’t your problem anymore.  You had a life.  A good life.”

“And we thought you did too!  You should have _told_ me, Stiles.”

“I didn’t want the only person I had other than my dad to disappear.”  Stiles collapses into the chair.  “I thought I could start a new life in the city once I realized that was how it was going to be, that I needed to learn to be on my own, but I was just heading for another disaster, like I always do.”

“You’re _not_ a disaster,” Isaac argues.

“Tell that to the alpha I let into my life and left me with these.”  Stiles pushes up his sleeves.

Scott snarls from the couch.  Isaac looks mortified.  Erica bares her teeth at the scars on Stiles’ skin.

“Who did that to you?”  Scott’s voice in unrecognizable.  “ _Which_ _alpha_?”

“The one that told me I was special.  The one who stopped coming over for business and turned it into pleasure.”  Stiles stares at the wall.  “He took my virginity, you know, and didn’t even spend the night.  I thought that was like some city thing.  No big deal if he couldn’t stay until morning.  He probably had somewhere to be.  Everyone did there.”

Stiles watches the wall until his eyes start to itch.  “But he kept coming back.  He said I was a good listener, which I should have known was crap because all I ever did was talk.  But he stayed, he made me feel good, he was someone to come home to eventually and I forgot how much I needed that.  So I let him leave things at the apartment.  I left stuff at his and ultimately I spent more time at his place than I did mine.  Millwick warned me I was breaking pack rules—getting involved without my alpha’s permission, to another alpha at that.

“I didn’t really hear him.  I was too focused on being with someone, feeling needed and surrounded by people that acted like they cared.  I would talk about you guys, like reminisce or something for a second and D—the alpha would get agitated.  He’d kiss me to shut me up.  He’d do it rough so I’d forget what I was talking about.  It worked for a while, but then Scott would call or video chat and I’d remember home.  I’d remember _him_ … And the alpha could smell it on me, he said, when I was thinking about… about…Derek.”

“He hit me…”  Stiles covers his face with his hands.  “He’d hit me so hard sometimes I’d wake up two days later in his bed like nothing happened.  He’d apologize.  He’d swear up and down he loved me.  He wanted me to be his.  But I had scars by then, and that should have been enough for me to wake the fuck up and run, but I didn’t think anyone else would want me anymore.”

Isaac is now curled around his back, sinking them to the floor.  Scott is pulling Stiles into his lap and Erica is draped around his side.

“The last time it happened, he told me I needed to take the bite from him.  I needed to be in his pack, not Laura’s.  That he was a better alpha and he loved me and wanted me to be his mate.  And everything inside of me said I wasn’t his.  Never would be because I was someone else’s.  I knew that I needed to leave.  I needed to call Laura and go home.  I never wanted to be a wolf, although you guys are great, but I never wanted to one, you know.

“He came at me fully shifted.”  Stiles leans back to lift his sweatshirt up, three angry scars on his chest for them to see. “It took eight betas to get him off of me.  His brother told me to run and never come back.  He saved me that night even though he probably knew by letting me go his alpha was as good as dead, because once it got back to Laura…”

Scott’s tears wet Stiles’ cheek.  Erica is growling softly in his ear and Isaac is holding him tight from behind.    “I’d broken every rule.  I’d shamed my pack, even if they’d want me back again.  I didn’t know if I could ever come here and be who I was again because I’m changed.  This will always be here.”  Stiles ran his fingers down the scars.  “I don’t think I can ever forget.”

“You will always be pack.”  Scott held Stiles’ chin up.  “You will always be ours.  Nothing you could ever do will change that.  Do you understand?  This isn’t your fault, Stiles.  He hurt what was ours.”

“And you can omit his name as much as you want to, but we will find him and he will pay for those scars,” Erica grits out.  “He will _pay_ for hurting you.”

“We’ll be here to help you heal.  Because you aren’t worthless and we never forgot you, Stiles.  We just thought we were doing good by you.  I’m sorry you ever thought you were unwanted.  It took me a long time to be okay, and now that I’m an expert on finding my way back, I’ll help you too.”

For the first time in years, Stiles opened his arms and his pack gathered in close.  He held on as the waves in his chest rocked his body with guilt, shame, and somewhere in the current… love.

***

Melissa was called next on the phone tree.  Scott suggested his mom be the one to tell John what had happened to his son in New York.  To let Stiles’ dad get the pure unadulterated rage out of his system before the couple both came over to Stiles’place.  Because sometimes Scott might be slow on the uptake, but he wasn’t stupid, and John Stilinski is like the father he always wanted.  He was Stiles’ dad, and if Scott felt this pissed as a werewolf, he had no idea what levels of out of his mind enraged he’d be if something like that happened to Marie.

Stiles was John’s Marie.  That was his kid, and his kid had already been through enough, more than most twenty-four year old men had ever been through.  No one would live to be guilty of the crime because whoever touched John’s son would pay dearly.  It had been a while since Stiles was a young teen.  John had connections, both human and preternatural.  Stiles’ abuser would know maximum pain by the time they were through with him.

Stiles’ dad walked into the den.  John’s eyes rimmed red and his chest heaving; he took one look at Stiles and told everyone else but Melissa to get the fuck out.  He shut the slider door in Laura’s face and closed the curtain.  In less than ten seconds he was on his knees in front of Stiles, pulling his child in for a Stilinksi hug that put every prior embrace to shame.

Stiles melted in his dad’s arms.  There were very few safe spots in Stiles’ life, but his dad was one of them.  Now that John knew, Stiles could just hug his dad back.  He hadn’t known how much he’d wanted his dad to know the truth until that very moment.

His dad said nothing.  Spoke with his actions, his hold and their bond as father and son.

Melissa joined them at some point.  Her touch so familiar and welcomed Stiles hadn’t even noticed.

The three of them stayed like that for a long while until the rest of the pack stopped accepting John’s orders and filled up the living room.  Lydia was there, Jackson by her side as they took up Stiles’ back in a surprising display of affection.  Stiles breathed in slowly, his stomach turning over and his hands shaking.

Erica took his shoulder, fitting her face against his cheek, their arms linked at his side.  Boyd took his hand, hugging Isaac into the throng of their pack.  John and Melissa made room for Laura and she straddled Stiles’ lap to hug him fully.  His dad touched Laura’s shoulder and that was that.  The circle was complete.

This was where Stiles belonged after all.

This was his pack.

He looked up at Laura and met her red eyes and he wasn’t afraid.  He was glad.

***

Two days later Stiles waited until closing.  He waved at Danny through the window of _Hatter’s_ and got a grin in return. They’d hang out soon.  He wasn’t worried, Danny was cool like that.

Stiles kept walking around the brick building.  He glanced up at the neon sign, the outline of a flower and _Gladiolus_ scrawled above it.  He had no idea why they named the bar after that particular flower.  He’d often wondered, but now he could ask.  He and Laura were talking again.

Nothing was well and truly fixed.  Stiles was going to have problems healing from his past.  There were still pack politics to sort out.  An elders hearing with the three most prominent alphas in the country would come to Beacon Hills, where Stiles would give a statement in person and publically convict Donovan for his crimes.  It was the only way Laura could get away with it now that the Beacon Hills pack had expanded and matured, challenging Donovan outright would be bad without going through the proper channels.

The hunters would come calling if they didn’t.  Word would spread, a war might be started.  Stiles would have to wait.  He didn’t have it in him for war right now.  He was just grateful to be at the point where he could get up in the morning, shower and take things easy in a nice little routine.

But Stiles wasn’t outside the bar to develop battle strategies for pack wars or hunters, or even his own life.  He was here to ask the guy wiping down the counter why.  Why did Derek do it all those years ago?

It was literally the last piece he needed to move on and start to reconcile their relationship, or at best his mind.

He opens the door even though the sign says closed because he just locks it as he walks inside anyhow.  There’s an obnoxious bell that jingles as the door settles.  Derek has stopped wiping the counter, but then again he probably already smelled Stiles before he came inside anyway.

Stiles takes a deep breath.  He can do what he came here to do.

“Make me a drink.  I don’t care what it is,” Stiles says, taking off his jacket to lay it on an abandoned stool.  “Don’t argue about it either.”

Derek doesn’t say a word.  He hides the rag behind the bar and sets about pouring some whisky into a glass.  The bottle is crystal, sleek without a label and winks in the light as Derek puts the lid back on.  He places down a napkin and slides the drink to Stiles.

“This doesn’t make me your bitch,” Derek grits like it hurts.  Stiles thinks it might.

“Oh I’m well aware of the roles you and I play together.  Don’t you worry.”  Stiles takes a sip.  It burns so good.  Silken sugar and honey flood his mouth, warming his chest until he has to catch his breath.

Derek pins him with this intense stare.  Stiles is used to Derek’s multitude of different expressions, but this is one he has never seen before.  It frightens him, yet at the same time he never wants to see it fade.  “What do you want, Stiles?”

“What do I want?  I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me that.”

Derek grips the counter, gaze locked on the bar now.  “Don’t be smart.”

“Smart implies I knew what I needed to know, which apparently I didn’t, which also means you’re not smart either.  Looks like we’re having a bad day, you and I, realizing we’re not very smart.”  Stiles tips his head back and empties his glass.  “Fuck that’s good.”

He puts the glass down.  “I’ll take another.”

“Stiles…”

“Did you know the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome?  For instance, you saying my name like that, always, or I mean when you used to talk to me at all, and expecting me to accept it.  That’s what insanity is.”

Derek refills his glass and pushes it back to Stiles as if to say touché.  I have no explanation for that.

“Did you know I thought you were the one?”  Stiles takes another sip.  He waves Derek’s fleeting shock away with his hand.  “It’s silly. I know.  How can an eighteen year old kid think he can love anything close to you?  Or love, period.  How could he know for sure, accept you as his fate but look forward to it at the same time. Well I did.  I loved Derek Hale, whoever that used to be.”  Stiles is letting the alcohol sink in.  He’s always been a lightweight, but this stuff hits him hard.  This whisky is a beautiful thing. 

He puts his elbows on the bar.  “I thought you felt the same.  No one had ever looked at me the way you did.  And I know half the time it was anger, or what was supposed to be anger directed at me, but the other half wasn’t.  I saw you, you know.  I knew what you were made of.  I know you got me in as much danger as I got myself into but you were it, man.”  Stiles raises his drink in salute.  “And then you weren’t.”

Derek breathes deeply, fogging the bar top.  His fingers twitch but Stiles is growing bolder by the second.  Like a lot of things, he’s stopped caring so much.  But in this case it’s a good thing.  Otherwise he’d never get this out.

“And for a second, I thought about taking the bite to be with you, to understand what it was like, but I realized you would never want that for me.  You wanted me for me and I fucking respected that.  I respected the _hell_ out of you, Derek.”  Stiles sniffs into his drink, wrist a little limper as he sips again.  “And then I didn’t.”

There’s a moment where Stiles finishes his whisky.  Hears Derek’s ragged breathing.  Hears his own heartbeat in his head.

“I tried to replace you.”

“Stiles…”  Derek puts his forehead to the bar, voice utterly wrecked.

“I gave up on waiting for you to tell me it was all a joke and that you were going to come find me and take me home.  After you didn’t, someone else came along and I was in a bad way, Derek, so bad you don’t even know.  I knew it was wrong.  I knew it and I fucking let him because he was an alpha, he filled the gap where my pack was supposed to be.”

“Stop.”  Derek grabs his hand.  His green eyes burn blue, glowing for Stiles to see.  “ _Please_.”

“And I know what you did.  I came here to ask why but I already know, Derek.  I’ve known the same thing you have for a very long time, but you chose to _shun_ for it like I had a choice whether or not to love you.”  Stiles trembles.  “I gave him what was always yours to have and he… he beat me for it.”

Stiles puts his face in his hands, nails digging into his forehead as the whisky becomes a terrible idea.

Derek is around the bar already.  He gathers Stiles in his arms, Stiles’ legs wrapped around his waist, and he carries him to the back room.  He holds Stiles on the floor for what seems like hours.  The two of them plastered to each other in a tangle of arms and legs. 

Stiles has never seen Derek cry until now.  It’s the kind of crying that surpasses angry and goes right to place that everyone carries, that dark spot you wished you didn’t have that creeps up on you.

It’s the place you experience every emotion at once and you hate it so badly but you can’t do a thing to stop it from swallowing you whole.  A place reserved for Stiles’ mother dying of cancer and Derek watching his family burn.  And now another tragedy has taken up residence.

Derek and Stiles can only handle it if they hold one another and never break away.

***

It’s after midnight.  Derek is in the swing next to him at the park.  They haven’t said anything for hours since Stiles confessed.

Derek breaks that unsaid vow.  One of them had to at some point.

“I can’t take it back.  That’s one thing I learned after my family… died.  You just can’t take that shit back.  Not one second of it.”  Derek pushes off with his feet.

Stiles starts to move beside him.  “I let him, Derek.  I did that.”

“No.”  Derek is shaking his head.  “I was talking about what I said to you before you left.  How I did it.  The way you looked, smelled, the whole thing.  I can’t take back that moment, Stiles, and I have never, nor will I ever forgive myself.”  Derek looks haunted as he swings away like he needs it.  As if he has to put the anger somewhere so why not leave it to gravity.

“You hurt me.”  Stiles lowers his chin, staring at the ground as it rushes back and forth.

“And I am sorry for what I did.  You were right.  It wasn’t just you.”  Derek slowed down enough to match Stiles’ pace.  “Did you know I lived at your dad’s place after he moved in with Melissa, your house now?  I stayed there right up until Millwick called Laura and told her you were coming home.  I had to be as close to you as I could get without you being there.”

Stiles drags his feet through the sand to come to a complete halt.

“I slept in your old bed.  After a while everything stopped smelling like you.  I went a little crazy.”  Derek looks up in earnest.  “If I had given in that day Stiles, if I’d kept kissing you, I know you’d have never left.  Never gotten the chance to experience a normal life and make sure this pack was what you wanted, that _I_ was what you wanted after you’d seen what else was out there.”

Stiles just sits still and listens.  He’s waited years for this, dreamt of this, but now that’s it here he’s not sure he can handle it.

“Yet I let you go and it turned out to be the worst mistake of my life.”

“So what do we do?”  Because Stiles needs to know.  He needs Derek to have an answer.

“Go from here.”

“It’s going to take forever, Derek.  Is it worth it?  Can we even do this anymore?”  Stiles rubs his face.  “I’m not the same.  I want to be the same, but I’m not.  I can’t just _fix_ _it_.”

“Then let me help.”  Derek grabs the chain of Stiles’ swing and drags him closer.  “Give me a place to start, Stiles.”

Start at the beginning—so simple yet equally difficult for a person opening a new chapter.  Stiles curls his fingers around Derek’s chain, locking them in place.  “I forgive you.”

***

Fear sinks its claws into Stiles as he waits in the hall of the Argent’s secure basement two weeks later.  The elders have gathered in Beacon Hills to oversee Donovan Dougherty’s sentencing. Donovan and his pack representatives had been marshalled to California by the elder’s enforcers.

Laura is holding Stiles’ hand.  John is pressed to his side.  Boyd and Scott lean against the wall, waiting for them all to be summoned.

Laura hadn’t allowed Derek to be present for good reason.  Melissa was keeping an eye on the rest of them at the Hale house, but they were all positive where Derek would be at the end of this horrific night.

“They’re ready,” Chris said as he poked his head into the hall.

Stiles flinched at the sounds of Donovan fighting the chains.  Laura practically picked him up onto his feet.  John held him up one side.  As long as they stood next to him he could do this.  He could face his attacker again and do something right about it for once.

Two wolves from Morningside Heights took up one corner of the room.  The cage was front and center.  And presiding at the head of the room were the elders, all three of them facing Laura’s pack and Donovan.

“Donovan Doughtery, Alpha of Morningside Heights, you have been charged with endangering the life of a human, attempted murder and rape, and breaking the code to blood challenge Alpha Hale’s beta,  when it is public knowledge you do not have the right to that innocent’s life.  You have said your peace as the head of your pack as your elders stand witness.”

Stiles looks Donovan in the eye and does not look away.  His eyes fill with tears, the fear is a taste on his tongue and yet he stands unmoved.

“What say you, Alpha?”

Donovan’s snarl rips through the room.  “Not guilty.”

“Genim Stilinski, please present your evidence against this alpha.”

Laura grips his hand in hers.  “You can do this.”

Stiles brushes his hand against his father’s before they let him go.  Stiles slowly pulls his long sleeved shirt over his head.  Donovan scans his body with hunger, zeroing in on the marks he left behind, unrepentant for his actions.  He goes wild in the cage.  The bolts in the wall groan.

The elder is unfazed. “As you have so plainly left your mark with intention upon his skin, we the elders deny your claim of innocence and sentence you to death.  Is this in agreement?”

The elders voice their support.

“Your death lies in the hands of the alpha whose beta you have wronged,” the elder continues.

Laura challenges the two males from Donovan’s pack.  One of them is Donovan’s brother, Emile.  Emile and his fellow beta don’t contest Laura’s challenge.  They had witnessed too much to know anything but Donovan’s guilt, of his lunacy and weakness towards their pack.

Stiles had one last chance to see Donovan’s eyes before Stiles was ushered out of the room by his father.  As he took the first step up and away from the madness, he heard the cage door swing open; a violent screech and then a rattle as it came to a stop.  The further up he went, the quieter the screams became, and all while Laura’s power rushed down his spine.

When Stiles got home, Derek was there.

He stopped shaking somewhere near sunrise.

***

**_One Year Later_ **

Jackson threw a bag at Stiles’ feet and offered him a stick.  It was a Sunday.  The high school lacrosse field was empty except for them.

“Don’t give me that face.  This is happening whether you like it or not.”  Jackson dug equipment out of the duffel.  “You’ve been running with me almost every day for the past five months.  It’s a thing, so lay off about it.”

“Did I get a free upgrade from bad to worse on Jackson’s Scale of Douchebaggery?”  Stiles grins.

Jackson checked his shoulder playfully as he walked by.  “Fuck off, Stiles.  You know you love it.”

“Derek’s more than I can handle most days as it is.  I don’t know what I would do with two guys after my body.”  Stiles snorts while chucking the bag to the side.

“And be on Lydia’s shit list over your scrawny ass?”  Jackson howled with laughter.  “In your dreams, Stilinski.”

Stiles flipped him off, waving at Scott with the other hand.  Scott dropped his bag near the bench and came running over.  “Isaac’s on the phone with Danny in the car.  He’ll probably be a while.”  Scott rolls his eyes.

“Like you never made any of us wait when you were on the phone with Allison.”  Jackson puts his hands on his hips, his stick jutting into the air.

“He’s got a point.”  Stiles shrugs his shoulders.

“You’re supposed to be my best friend!”  Scott laughs, gently punching Stiles in the arm.  Stiles doesn’t flinch when they do that anymore.  Sometimes he thinks he should have after the fact, but it’s Scott and Stiles has learned his pack would never do a thing to hurt him.  These are friends, his family.

“Who vowed never to lead you astray, but when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

Scott tackles him to the ground with a victory cry.  Jackson tosses his stick and gets involved in the tangle.  By the time they’re able to catch their breath, the three of them are sprawled on the backs, smiling and panting for air.

Isaac finds them sometime later.  He looms over Stiles with a raised brow and a soft smile.  “What did I miss?”

***

One week later Stiles stepped into the circle of candles that surrounded the Nemeton.  Laura took his hand and smiled.  The entire pack stood outside the circle.  Isaac, Danny, Boyd, Erica, Lydia and Jackson were there.  Scott and Derek side by side on the other side of the stump.

Two figures stepped out of the trees.  Stiles was pleased to see them.  Deaton led Millwick to stand up for Stiles where he and Laura were facing each other.

Stiles took Laura’s hands in his.  She was just as excited as him, and it sang through the powerful bond they had with each other again.

Deaton put his hand on Stiles’ shoulder.  He beamed in the candlelight.  “I’d just like to take a moment to say something to you.  It has been a pleasure to watch you grow up, Stiles.  You are by far the best person for this job and I am happy to hand things over to you and retire as your friend.”

  1.   That hit home.  Stiles let go of Laura to give Deaton a hug.  The advisor reciprocated firmly.  “Let’s begin,” he whispers.



Stiles shivers, feeling every bit of magic in himself, in Deaton and Millwick, in Laura and his pack, but most especially the Nemeton, the stump that channeled their reason for gathering.

“Hale Pack, this man stands before you today, offering his life, his heart, and his devotion to your safety and wellbeing.  In return, he shall be granted the same because he’s earned his place.  He’s poured blood, sweat, and tears into this pack, giving you as his family his loyalty and trust.”  Deaton stepped away.  “Alpha Hale, do you honor this man as his alpha, and he as your emissary, your advisor in all things?”

“I do.”  Laura scrunched her face before she smiled so bright Stiles gripped her hands tighter.

“And you, Genim, do you accept this female as your alpha and those standing around you as your pack, as your family, your world.  Do you so swear to put your faith in Alpha Hale as she will for you, and protect this pact with all the knowledge and skill you possess?”

A grin broke across Stiles’ face.  “I do.”

“The both of you will place your hands upon this source of power to seal these vows.”

Laura and Stiles kneeled opposite each other with the Nemeton between them.  They flattened their hands along the surface and felt the first thrum through their fingers.

“Tonight I relinquish my title and hand it to you, Genim.  I leave you in the hands of your alpha and this pack knowing you will do great things together.”  Deaton placed his hands upon the Nemeton.  “I give up these rites.”

Stiles took a single breath, his eyes going wide in the face of the purest light he had ever seen.  The magic rushed inside him, filling every corner of his soul until he knew it was complete.

He fell onto his back with a sigh.  Candlelight danced around the edges of his vision, framing the starry sky through a tangle of branches above him.  Stiles closed his eyes, a smile on his lips.  His pack joined him, cuddled around the stump that could never be fully explored, and slept well through the next day.

***

Stiles works four days a week at the library from noon to five.  From an outside perspective he gets paid far more than he should to pour through ancient texts that are now brought in on a regular basis.   But when those donations come attached with mysterious cases, he doesn’t feel so bad for making a hefty salary doing something he loves.  He’s more than paid his dues, yet he continues to pay them because that’s his job and he thrives on it.

He gets to go home after work and gets the choice to putter around in his shed, host impromptu pack gatherings, or go to sleep a few hours later and wait for Derek on the days he works the late shift at _Gladiolus_.  But the days that Derek is home are Stiles’ favorite.

The lazy Sundays they both set aside time for, to work on them as a couple and nothing else.

Derek plays his fingers against Stiles’.  Stiles rests his head on Derek’s chest as they lie in bed, Derek reading something about the history of whiskey and Stiles walking the line between sleep and awake.

Stiles sighs and stretches.  He taps Derek’s book and Derek closes it to set on the sheets.  Derek sighs as Stiles flicks his eyes back to the book.  “Laura finally agreed to start carrying the good stuff.  I wanted to a while back, but we were just opening up and kind of new to owning a bar.  We’d wait to work our way up.”

“Yeah, but you should make your own like you were telling me.  Why sell someone else’s stuff when yours could be good, if not better?”

Derek leans down and kisses his temple.  “I didn’t think you were listening.”

“Only you would strike up a serious conversation while I’m trying to watch Star Wars.  You’re just lucky I can multitask these days.”  He runs his hand down Derek’s chest.  “But I do listen, especially when it involves you getting passionate about something.”

Derek licks his lips.  “You really think I should branch out like that?  It’d involve a lot of work, a lot of hours—”

“If you can put up with me playing with plants in the middle of the night, I think I can indulge you this one time.”  Stiles winks.  “Plus, who doesn’t want to taste test homebrewed whisky?  We could get our own reality show, or if things go south, the worst we could end up as would be the neighborhood frat house, which is okay in my book.  Parties.  Hot chicks throwing themselves at me for a solo cup.  Loud music.  And it’s not like we have don’t have the cops to turn a blind eye because they’re kind of in our pocket.”

Derek laughs.  “Hot chicks?”

“A metaphor for my hunky boyfriend with delicious sleep rumpled hair.”  Stiles reaches up and draws Derek’s head down for a kiss.  He ignores the scars on his body now, and in a way he sometimes forgets they’re there.  Some days he wears long sleeves and others he doesn’t, but when he bares his chest, the deepest scars of all, he only lets Derek see.

Because Derek is blind to them too.  His tongue doesn’t stutter over the raised lines in Stiles’ skin as he licks his way across Stiles’ body.  His lips don’t falter when Derek drags him in for another kiss.  His hands don’t hesitate to run up and down Stiles’ arm, over his chest.

“That’s what I thought,” Derek whispers.  “Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

Stiles runs his hands through Derek’s hair.  “Yeah.  We’re there now.”

Derek understands the double meaning.  He smiles the way no one else will ever see him smile but Stiles.  “Good,” he replies roughly and kisses Stiles.

***

It’s Thanksgiving at the Hale house and everyone is gathered.  Most of the pack is wallowing in a food coma in the living room, lumped together on the sofas, watching a made for television movie.  Derek is saving Stiles a seat for when he gets done doing the dishes with Laura.

In the semi privacy of the kitchen, Laura bumps elbows with Stiles.  He shakes his head at her, grinning down at the soapy water.  He glances about for his dish towel and his gaze lands on the paper bag with the _Gladiolus_ logo stamped on it, a few bottles of wine poking out the top.

Stiles stares at the flower outlined in ink and a thought occurs to him.  “Why Gladiolus?”

“Why did we name the bar that you mean?”

Stiles nods. He looks back to his alpha.  She grows quiet, not in an uncomfortable way, but rather a thoughtful one.

“When you were gone, your dad and Derek hung out a lot.”

“They’ve both mentioned it.”  And they had.  John had grown pretty fond of Derek, and it was like pulling teeth to get Derek to admit he felt the same, but he and Stiles had gotten there nonetheless.  Most of Derek and his dad’s bonding time was a shared loved of sports and grilling meat John shouldn’t be eating, but sometimes there were a few sentimental moments tossed in to spice things up. 

Laura loops her arm through his, suds dripping from their hands.  “Your dad told Derek all about the things you used to love when you were little. Back when your mom was alive.”

“My mom?”

Laura nods.  “Your dad showed Derek the picture on his desk at work, the one of you and your mom planting Gladiolus when you were like five.  John said it was your favorite memory of her and that Gladiolus were her favorite flower.”

“They were,” Stiles whispers back.

In all the years Derek had pushed them apart, he still found a way to bring Stiles home.  Each and every day they made their way closer to each other, picking up the details that formed yet another chapter.

Stiles stared into his alpha’s eyes and saw the way she felt for him, the way she more than gave him her blessing to throw this book out and start another one entirely, because with a revelation like that, how could he not want to give in and give over to the way he wanted to show Derek he loved him.

Stiles dried his hands.  He swept Laura into a hug, only letting go when her wet fingers soaked through his sweater.  On the barstool laid his jacket, and in the pocket was a ring box.  The ring itself was shiny and light like the way Derek made him feel, round in a way that never ended like the way he hoped their years would be together, and held so much meaning Stiles couldn’t believe he had gotten this far, that he wanted to go farther.

He retrieved the ring and then walked towards the living room.  In the bluish cast of light from the television he saw Derek searching him out in the doorway.  With the others distracted, Stiles held up the box in his hand.  Derek froze, but his eyes burned for that box because he’d heard what was said in the kitchen.  Every wolf in the house did, and thankfully the rest of the pack chose to play dumb and let them have this moment.

Never looking away, Derek pulled back the blanket, gesturing to the spot beside him that would always be for Stiles.

Stiles slipped a ring on Derek’s finger that night.

He was no longer afraid.

**_Fin_ **


End file.
